King County elections chief candidate hounded by financial woes

Julie Kempf, a former King County elections official and current candidate to run the $19 million office, has had trouble making her home-mortgage payments.

Mortgage lenders initiated foreclosure proceedings against her seven times between 2002 and 2008, saying she had defaulted on her loan payments and that her Green Lake home would be sold at auction. Each time, she paid enough to satisfy the creditors and keep her house.

The amount of unpaid debts claimed by the lenders in filings with the county, including late fees, attorneys' fees and trustees' fees, ranged from $9,245 in a 2002 filing to $22,983 last year, when Kempf allegedly missed eight payments of $2,826 each.

Kempf also has failed to pay back a personal loan secured by a second note on her property, according to the lender, election activist Jason Osgood.

Kempf said she hasn't worked full time and has "largely depleted" her savings since she was fired as county elections superintendent six years ago. Her personal financial challenges don't mean she couldn't manage an adequately funded elections office, she said.

"I know how to be frugal," Kempf said. "Whether that's buying Top Ramen for my home pantry or not buying ridiculously expensive elections equipment, I know how to make a dollar stretch."

Six candidates are running for elections director in the Feb. 3 vote-by-mail election. Voters decided last November to make the position, previously an appointed one, an elected post. The salary is $146,000.

The other candidates are Elections Director Sherril Huff, former Metropolitan King County Councilmember David Irons, state Sen. Pam Roach, high-school teacher Christopher Clifford, and retired bank technology and operations manager Bill Anderson.

Huff's finances also have drawn scrutiny. The Internal Revenue Service filed a $13,534 lien against her in March 2007, claiming she had failed to pay income taxes for 2000.

The lien, filed with the Kitsap County recorder, was reported by Sound Politics blogger Stefan Sharkansky, who called Huff a liar because she wrote on a Democratic Party candidate questionnaire that she had never failed to pay any taxes.

Huff said the IRS filed the lien because the agency mistakenly thought she had not filed her tax return for 2000, but she was eventually able to demonstrate that she had filed on time and paid her taxes. When the matter was cleared up, she said, the IRS returned penalty payments she had made during years of the dispute.

"I did not lie on my form," Huff said of her Democratic questionnaire. "I did not fail to pay taxes."

Huff showed a letter from the IRS dated July 23, 2007, that reduced its calculation of taxes and penalties owed by more than $15,000 and gave her a $5,078 refund.

Kempf, also known as Julie Anne Kempf, was elections superintendent when the first foreclosure action was filed against her in 2002. She was fired for allegedly lying about the reasons ballots were mailed late to thousands of voters in the November 2002 election — an accusation she denies.

Kempf said she didn't pay back a $6,500 loan from Osgood last year because a client failed to pay her for consulting work and because she passed up a job opportunity to work as a volunteer on Osgood's unsuccessful campaign as the Democratic candidate for state secretary of state.

When she went to work on the campaign, Kempf said, she and Osgood agreed she wouldn't make loan payments until the campaign brought in enough money to pay her for her work — something that didn't happen.

Osgood confirmed that paying Kempf as a campaign consultant was one of the options they talked about to enable her to repay her loan.

After losing the statewide election, Osgood announced he would run for King County elections director, but dropped out of the race and endorsed Huff.

Osgood said he didn't know about Kempf's mortgage problems when he lent her money. He helped her out, he said, because other people had helped him during tough times and he wanted to "pay it forward."

It was money he said he could afford to lose. "If I get paid back in full someday, terrific," Osgood said. "If I don't, I've helped out someone who needed to be helped."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com